The following text is channeled material. The author, my guide, has the name Ophir. This text was channeled on May 31, 2015 in Chicago. This was Ophir's advice to me about how to understand right timing.

Time is of the essence for physical life on earth. Time is the platform on which you are able to experience physical reality. It allows you to have beginnings and endings. It also gives you the opportunity to separate your creative conceptions from their realizations, because you are able to walk through time between the moment that an idea or concept arises and when it takes form. Time gives you an opportunity to refine. Because time is relatively thick and slow, it is bound with physicality. It is the key to tempering your ideas. Finding the right “time” to bring an idea, a concept, a work, into existence … involves paying attention to inner signals. You are always guided by impulse, and by the flow of enthusiasm. You can rely on your enthusiasms to guide you into right action at the right time.

The right timing of things may look different at different moments in time. So, for example, if you feel the urge to create something … and you bring it into being, it may not be obvious to you right away that it was created at the right time because it may not produce its ultimate effect upon the world right away. It may take days, weeks, months, years, or even decades, before something you’ve created is able to fulfill its potential in the world. The right timing of your accomplishments may be obvious only in retrospect. It may be obvious only from the point in the future when your creation’s impact has peaked. At that point, in hindsight, you would be able to see the arc of its unfolding from concept to realization to blossoming in the wider world of consciousness.

So, for example, the moment that you complete a painting, or complete a musical composition, or publish a book, or finish any creative endeavor, you’ve completed a cycle that began with the seed of an idea and that culminated with its completion, it’s moment of blooming. But that moment of completion is itself like a seed, because your completed work, too, will, with time, further unfold, and grow, and bloom anew. And you cannot know, in many cases, what the arc of its maturity in time will look like. And so you must master patience and trust, which are very closely connected.

In order to be patient about something, you must trust that the outcome you are seeking will eventually occur. But there is an even higher form of trust, which is the trust that the right outcome will occur, whether or not it is the outcome that you’ve imagined. For sometimes what you imagine may become refined. Or you may be surprised to discover that whatever you’ve created takes on its own existence and leads to outcomes you never imagined. And so it is useful to trust that, as the saying goes, it’s all good—which means that the highest form of patience is one in which you’re able to allow something to become whatever it wants to become, without any constraint or limitation.

You are able to achieve this by opening your heart and mind to allowing your work to find its own path. There may be a contradiction between the part of you that relinquishes control, lets go, allows, and becomes open to whatever path your work takes … and the part of you that must, necessarily, execute your work, that must be in control of it, that must take steps to achieve it. It is a contradiction, a paradox, because you have to both walk toward a goal by creating your work, and at the same time be comfortable with arriving at any destination that the work takes you—whether it is the destination that you envisioned or not.

The easiest way to master this paradox is to always stay in a state in which you are responding to your impulses. Follow your instincts. Adjust your sails to meet the wind as the wind shifts. For many, it’s not easy to let go of control. For many, it's uncomfortable to not know where things are going or what’s going to happen. But it need not be difficult. The best way to let go of control is to adopt a sense of adventure. Imagine yourself as being on a journey in which you are, at the same time, paradoxically, both the driver and the passenger.

You must put your foot on the gas, and follow the road, and steer the wheel, and, simultaneously, be present in the passenger seat where you are able to see events unfold, and appreciate them regardless of where they lead.

It’s always helpful to dip in and out of both roles—to set forth boldly on a course of action in response to your intuition and impulses and passions, and, at the same time, to marvel, from moment to moment, at the sights and sounds that surround you at the present moment, whatever that moment may be like. Whether it’s sunny or raining or snowing or pleasant, whether it’s quiet or still, whether it’s exciting or boring—it is all part of the tapestry of your experience. Every moment is worth your mindfulness. Every moment is worthy of appreciation. It is all sublime.

You can choose to experience each moment, each outcome, each turn in the road with an open heart, an open mind, and a spirit of adventure. If you keep an ever keen eye to find the glory in each moment, you will find it. You can find glory in the most subtle things, from the flutter of leaves in a tree, to the sound of a bird singing, to the sight of evanescent fog drifting off a roof. You can find glory in music, for example, whether it is music aimed at edification and spiritual stimulation, or music that is commercial, aimed at selling you something. Whether you hear silly music, or serious music, or fun music, or scary music, you can find glory.

And you can see the people that you encounter in the world as they are, which may be plain and ordinary. But each person you encounter has his or her own rich tapestry of experiences, which you can sense if you look beneath the surface and let go of whatever judgments you may have about that person’s life.

Open your heart to the beauty around you, whether it’s presenting itself in a loud, hard-to-miss form that is easy for everyone to appreciate, or whether it’s presenting itself in a more subtle form that you can learn to appreciate. So you might see the exuberance of a squirrel jumping around and playing with another squirrel, or you might hear the earnestness of a bird singing for a mate, or you might feel the combination of determination and vigor and hope that accompanies someone who’s out jogging, whether or not that person possesses physical beauty. And even if you encounter a person who is not someone you would normally feel easily connected to, you can connect. You can connect to everyone that you meet, regardless of his or her politics, or his or her race, or his or her gender, or his or her age. Just let yourself feel the rich tapestry of humanity that each person represents, because, like you, each person you meet experiences all the same emotions of human existence, from happiness to sadness to joy to boredom to excitement to fear to sadness to hope.

And so you may also notice that this channeling session, this collection of words, is itself an example of something in which you let yourself set forth on a goal to learn about right timing, yet you walked along a wide-ranging and roundabout path, that touched upon many ideas, but which led back to this insight into the nature of time: Time is like space. It is a dimension that you can explore. And, as with space, you can move through it. You can propel yourself backwards and forwards and sideways. You can stand still. You can find it frustrating—or you can marvel at its enormous affordance of opportunity. Because you can do whatever you want with it. You can choose, always, where to step, and how to experience the present moment. Once you’ve fully and completely grasped the fact that you can choose how you want to experience each moment, you can transcend the paradox of being both the driver and the passenger in time and space, and in your life.